Is Uranus "dead" or "alive"?

[PlutonianEmpire]

I remember seeing on an educational video that the reason Uranus appears bland because its core is "shut down" for some reason. If so, would that mean that the planet emits far less radiation than it would if it had an active core, therefore making it a wee bit safer for it to have an earthlike moon?

[Malenfant]

I remember seeing on an educational video that the reason Uranus appears bland because its core is "shut down" for some reason. If so, would that mean that the planet emits far less radiation than it would if it had an active core, therefore making it a wee bit safer for it to have an earthlike moon?

Just going by memory here, the thing with Uranus is that it's not radiating as much heat as the other gas giants, but all that means is it's not getting out of the interior. ISTR reading something about how its interior may be layered in such a way that the heat is trapped inside it, so it's not convecting the heat out.

The radiation environment at Uranus is pretty bad though - the moons are still bombarded by radiation (the methane etc there is thoroughly irradiated), and it definitely does have a magnetic field. So the core hasn't 'shut down'.

[ajtribick]

IIRC the bland appearance of Uranus has something to do with its orientation - it seems to have acquired more definite cloud bands now the sun is over the equator as opposed to the poles.

Out of interest, how effective would the Earth's atmosphere/magnetic field be against the radiation belts of a jovian planet?